Trip to Dapoli

The first trip……at long last

It took me 4 months of riding my bike to convince myself that I could venture on a long distance trip. All this time I made sure to talk to my friends and touch their adventure loving nature in order to be able to chalk out something. Finally in the last week of February Marshal* was convinced too that we were ready to take on something of such magnitude.

So the planning phase began of course by getting our hands on a map of Maharashtra from Crossword (65 INR). Then we met on the Wednesday to plan out things so that we did not keep anything pending till the last minute and forget it in the process (I follow agile methodologies at work; seems to have rubbed off..). It was decided that we would leave on 4^th morning at 5:30 so that we could reach our destination before noon (estimating is something that you get better with experience, we learnt it thru this. Btw estimation is another part of agile)

OK so much for the planning, let me start with the trip.

Destination: Murud- Dapoli- Ratnagiri- Maharashtra.

Cast: Marshal*, Uv*, Viks* and moi

Supporting role: two Bajaj Pulsar 180 dts-I and a Honda Unicorn.

4^th March, 2006

Finally the day dawned; actually we left before dawn. The plan was to leave at 5:30 am but it was 6:15 by the time we started. The good news was that Marshal had managed to get his hands on a map of the Konkan and he was smart enough to get 4 copies of it. This map was much better than the one we had bought and it helped a lot on the trip.

We hit the route to katraj ghats. The roads here are a nightmare and we traveled 2-3 kms on the ghat in 1^st and 2^nd gear, not exactly highway driving but after the katraj tunnel we reached the newly built roads and hit it hard. All of us reached speeds in excess of 100kmph and marshal whose bike is the newest of the lot hit 100 for the first time. Welcome to the “over 100 kmph” club, Marshal. Soon we reached Nasrapur where we had to take a right turn on the way to Bhor. Here we had our first stop for chai and directions.

After this we continued on our way to Bhor, this route is absolutely awesome. The sun was just rising and the road was lined on both sides with lush fields. It was a scene straight out of DDLJ. I have to admit that I hadn’t experienced a sunrise for sometime and it was a pleasant change. Also for people living in the cities, India is still a land of villages and farmers, go out and enjoy the beauty of the rural India. We also saw a lot of children on their way to school. The other good landscape is when u ride over a bridge with the sun rising on one side, it’s breathtaking. We reached Bhor by 8 am and then proceeded to Mahad. The roads are quite nice and it took us another couple of hours to reach Mahad. We reached there by 10:15 am. After this we did the mistake of taking the wrong route, wrong not because we got lost or anything but because…..read on.

From Mahad we took the road to Mhapral which was covered in quick time. And then we hit the road to Mandangad where the inevitable happened. While cruising along at one junction we saw a dude flailing his arms as if he wanted to tell us something. We turned back and he told us that the road ahead was closed and that we would have to take a detour. What a detour it was!!! There was no cemented road, tar road, gravel road absolutely nothing just a lot of red mud (now I know what Mars looks like). We must have traveled only 10 kms or so on this road but believe me that was the toughest part of the trip. The bikes were spewing mud and if any big vehicle came around we would be in the middle of a sand storm. By the time we reached Mandangad we were covered in red dust. Everything was red….our bikes, our jackets, jeans, boots. We spent 10 mins dusting all the mud off and took a long break for breakfast. Marshal and Uv were fasting (they do it every Saturday, good boys..) so they went in search of “fast” food while Viks and I tucked into missal pav (with extra pav).

After we had relaxed a bit we started on the way to Dapoli, this road was quite nice and we made up some time. If you ever take this route keep your eyes out for a right turn to Dapoli. Some idiot has stuck a poster on the milestone here and you might miss it and reach Khed instead. We reached Dapoli around 12:30 and from there we had to travel the final 17 kms to Murud. The funny part was that we thot that we had to go to Harne ( I christened this “Hernia” coz it caused us so much pain) and after traveling all the way to Harne we realized that we had to go to Murud which was 3 kms before Harne. It’s really frustrating when you are so close and you get lost. Finally we reached Murud and when we reached the hotel that we were planning to stay in, it was full. Wow!!! This was getting worse. We then left it and found another hotel where the guy at the desk was doodling. I have to talk about this old man. It was as if he was doing the world a favour by sitting there. All the time we were speaking and he was busy with his ‘art’. He wouldn’t reply properly and generally looked as if he was angry at everyone. Maybe he wanted to become a painter, is it our mistake that he did not! Good that he didn’t, he didn’t look all that good at it. Ok so much for the guy. We left the place and were able to find a hotel named Kshitij where the rooms were for 500 INR and an extra bed would cost another 100 rs. More than enough for us.

Even after riding for nearly eight hours all of us were eager to get wet and the beach was too good. We had a lot of fun and then three of us dozed of on the beach while viks took the opportunity to create a masterpiece in the sand. Believe me this guy is talented, hope he takes it as a more serious hobby (riding with us I mean….) we then took our bikes to the shore and went riding on the sand. Sadly it’s not all that fun as it looks in the movies coz it’s quite difficult to keep the bike going in a straight line and the sand is not the best surface.

We returned to the room and had dinner. The dinner was lip smacking, very simple but very tasty. We also had a round of sol-kadi to wash down the food. I had a fried pomfret and like everything else, it was UMMM….

Like I said earlier two of us were fasting and so they could not have fish. Guess what they come up with… they tell the cook to fry fish and send it to the room so that they can have it after 12am by which time it would officially be Sunday. Wah!!! Go techies go! The funny part was that by 10 we were absolutely tired and wanted to sleep but since we had ordered the fish, we had to stay up. So we go to the beach again at close to 11:30 and good thing that we did. The sky, that night, was scintillating, I have never seen a night sky like it, never. It was as if some millions of diamonds were sparkling in the moonlight. It was just mind-blowing. And to think that we miss out all that because we never have total darkness in our cities. If I had to go there just to see a sky like that again, I would. We managed to stay up till 12 and devoured the fish and slept well satiated.

5^th march

In the morning we decided to go to one end of the beach where supposedly, was the confluence of a river and the sea. Sadly it turned out that the river had dried out in the summer. It was disappointing but we decided to ride our bikes to the other end of the beach. Marshal suggested that we do it bare-chested and everyone jumped to the idea. So we ride to the other end of the beach and we spotted a flock of seagulls. We park our bikes and ran like crazy in order to create a scene like the movies. It looks better in real life. There were at least 500 hundred birds and watching them take off was really cool. That was the end of the trip. We came back to the hotel, had lunch (which was again finger-licking good) and started the return journey.

We started the trip back at 1pm and this time decided to take a different route. The route on the way back was much much better. I have to say that I was particularly impressed by the stretch from Dapoli to Khed which was smooth like butter. I decided to test the limits of my bike and opened the throttle all the way, three times. The fastest I went was 119kmph, not 120. All the three times the bike was just refuse to move above 119 as if there was some invisible finger of God stopped it from going further. So that’s the official top speed for my bike. The road on the ghats too were good and it was too much fun to flick the bike on the curves which just wouldn’t end. The best part of driving curves is that if you nail a turn it’s a rush… there was no dearth to it since there were endless curves on the ghats. The road was good all the way back till Paud after which it became a nightmare. Pune municipal authorities, please do something about it. I never found such bad roads as those in pune during my whole trip. Wake up guys….

It took us 7 hrs to make the trip back and we reached Chandni chowk at 8pm. It was truly memorable, more so because this was our first endeavour and we managed to complete it without loss of life or limb or plastic or dents.

All of us thought that it was a great idea and the execution was even better. Also we decided that this would be the first of a number of such weekend trips that we plan to go on in the future.

Some riding tips

1) I think it was a good idea that we decided to tie our bags to the leg-guard and not carry it on our shoulder because it would hamper our riding and also carrying the weights for such a long time would result in really sore shoulders.

2) If you want to do something like testing your bike’s top speed, try to talk yourself out of it. If you still want to do, try and ask your friends to scare you out of it. If even after that you want to do it, make sure that you are at the head of the group when u start so that someone sees if, God forbid, you are lying on the side of the road.

3) Take frequent breaks and carry a lot of water.

4) Don’t stretch yourself too much while riding in order to impress others, an accident 300 kms from home is worse than one in your own city.

About the bikes

All the three bikes performed exceptionally well, we had absolutely no problems during the whole trip. They were ready to go on and on and on till we gave up. Just that all the red mud and the sand from the beach left it looking too dirty and we had to wash it before we started the return journey.

Hotel info

Kshitij hotel,

Post Murud, Dapoli,

Ratnagiri- 415713, Mahrashtra.

Phone: 02358-282961 (R)

-234603 (O)

Route info

While going:

Pune- Katraj- Nasrapur- Bhor- Mahad- Mhapral- Mandangad- Dapoli- Murud (Distance: 232 kms)

While returning:

Murud- Dapoli- Khed- Bharne- Mahad- Mangaon- Nizampur- Tamhini ghat- Mulshi- Paud- Chandni chowk- Pune. (Distance: 256 kms)

I would recommend the second route because most of it is through national and state highways but I have to say that it’s not as scenic as the first one.

*names have been changed to protect privacy